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savingdogs
Queen Filksinger
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- Dec 2, 2009
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Well the leaves are starting to change colors here, and it is always such a nice time of year to enjoy the forest. We get a lot of mists that hang in the trees, or low clouds that blow right over my head. The fog is actually usually a welcome sign that it has stopped raining. Hubby and I laugh at the weather forecasters here. They seem to have just a marginal guess to make each day. "Showers, turning to rain, with sunbreaks". They might as well say "We see some big clouds coming." 
We had a dry sunny afternoon, so I harvested all my taters. Wow! That was a great project for me. Of all my gardening endeavors, my potatoes (for the second year in a row) were my biggest success. I plan to do even more potatoes next year, we do consume alot.
My tomatoes, for the third year in a row, have gone to mush before they managed to turn red. I am just not going to try to grow them anymore, unless I have some sort of artificial lighting or greenhouse or something. But my garden did do well with pumpkins, squash, quinoa, corn and peas and beans. I grew oats and wheat as well, more as an experiment than anything else, but those do grow here. My chickens did get into the pumpkin patch and ruined some of them, so next year I will need to plant them elsewhere, but I had planned on feeding some of the pumpkin to them anyway, so it doesn't really matter. I managed to take a perfect round jack-o-lantern pumpkin to my granddaughter so all is good.
We did have a sad note today, we had to put down one of the rabbits, my buck Gramps. Something happened and he was paralyzed. I don't know what happened, we have not taken him out of the cage or anything lately. He seemed to be looking a little rumpled and laying in an odd position the other day. I could see he could not hop. I don't know what could have possibly happened. I know rabbits can break their backs flailing about but the last time we carried him anywhere was about a month ago, I need to do their nails so we haven't even handled him lately except for a pat on the head or whatever.
This does leave me genetically without a male on the one "side" of my rabbit lines. It leaves my productive doe, Sister, without a mate except her brother. AND, she didn't kindle on schedule. She is either four days late kindling, or she didn't take. I do wonder if something happened to Gramps when they were mating last month and it took awhile for him to start having trouble? But in any event, the best I can do now with my genetics would be to breed Sister to her 3-month old son when he grows up, who we were about to CONSUME. So we crossed him off the menu for the moment.
I'm not sure if breeding him to his mom is a good idea, but I was wondering if I could trade him with the breeder perhaps for an unrelated Creme, although I think most of hers are also related.
My other farm endeavors have been going well.....I've been making our bread, milking once a day, and babysitting an old dog for a friend. Not much else to report.
I do enjoy the temperatures being a little cooler and look forward to seeing the change in the leaf colors, it is so pretty here in the fall, I really enjoy it. We moved here about this time of year, and whenever the anniversary of our move to WA state rolls around, I remind myself how happy I am we came to the Pacific Northwest and I live in the great outdoors.
We had a dry sunny afternoon, so I harvested all my taters. Wow! That was a great project for me. Of all my gardening endeavors, my potatoes (for the second year in a row) were my biggest success. I plan to do even more potatoes next year, we do consume alot.
My tomatoes, for the third year in a row, have gone to mush before they managed to turn red. I am just not going to try to grow them anymore, unless I have some sort of artificial lighting or greenhouse or something. But my garden did do well with pumpkins, squash, quinoa, corn and peas and beans. I grew oats and wheat as well, more as an experiment than anything else, but those do grow here. My chickens did get into the pumpkin patch and ruined some of them, so next year I will need to plant them elsewhere, but I had planned on feeding some of the pumpkin to them anyway, so it doesn't really matter. I managed to take a perfect round jack-o-lantern pumpkin to my granddaughter so all is good.
We did have a sad note today, we had to put down one of the rabbits, my buck Gramps. Something happened and he was paralyzed. I don't know what happened, we have not taken him out of the cage or anything lately. He seemed to be looking a little rumpled and laying in an odd position the other day. I could see he could not hop. I don't know what could have possibly happened. I know rabbits can break their backs flailing about but the last time we carried him anywhere was about a month ago, I need to do their nails so we haven't even handled him lately except for a pat on the head or whatever.
This does leave me genetically without a male on the one "side" of my rabbit lines. It leaves my productive doe, Sister, without a mate except her brother. AND, she didn't kindle on schedule. She is either four days late kindling, or she didn't take. I do wonder if something happened to Gramps when they were mating last month and it took awhile for him to start having trouble? But in any event, the best I can do now with my genetics would be to breed Sister to her 3-month old son when he grows up, who we were about to CONSUME. So we crossed him off the menu for the moment.
I'm not sure if breeding him to his mom is a good idea, but I was wondering if I could trade him with the breeder perhaps for an unrelated Creme, although I think most of hers are also related. My other farm endeavors have been going well.....I've been making our bread, milking once a day, and babysitting an old dog for a friend. Not much else to report.
I do enjoy the temperatures being a little cooler and look forward to seeing the change in the leaf colors, it is so pretty here in the fall, I really enjoy it. We moved here about this time of year, and whenever the anniversary of our move to WA state rolls around, I remind myself how happy I am we came to the Pacific Northwest and I live in the great outdoors.
Ours seem to take forever to get going, but we are getting quite a few everyday here now... especially the cherry tomatoes! I planted a variety called Juliet that are like miniature Romas. They are not extra sweet like most cherries and are much drier, so not as good for eating out of hand. They DO make great sauces, however and have produced like MAD all summer long. Much better than the actual Romas. With the limited space that I have to grow tomatoes in they are a winner for us. 
- when they were first planted, stunted their growth. 
I took her inside and Hubby and I quickly decided we needed to kill her. I will never forget her squawaaaaak! as I set her down. So I go out back, and discover her feathers are everywhere, and her sister is acting listless and tired and is missing all her tail feathers, so she was part of it. I see feathers inside the coop AND outside, out of the fence. I count heads and see there is another one missing too.................Buffy my last adult Buff Orpington and one that Unpretty considered her daughter. I found her dead UNDER the coop (outside the fence), with all her soft parts ripped out. We really can't figure out what happened, underneath our coop is outside the chicken fencing. Something came that is able to fly around, because it followed/chased the birds all over the fenced and unfenced areas, and Buffy could not fly, so we were stumped how she came to be under the coop, I think she was dragged under there after she was killed. So we decided to cover the pen and no more free ranging. We went to Lowe's and spent a fortune on chicken wire to cover the entire top of the pen, more than we spent on all the coop supplies combined. I don't know how else to guard against a predator that flies except cover the top. 
